


Crimson & Silver

by yeen_meteor



Category: Persona 4, Persona Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Gen, vampire!souji
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-02-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:07:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22965142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yeen_meteor/pseuds/yeen_meteor
Summary: 'A gift for the Wild Card. For the battles that lie ahead.'While Souji and his friends' investigation into the mysterious killer in Inaba was still just beginning, the Investigation Team's leader finds himself with a curse that threatens to turn him into the very thing he set out to stop. The newly-turned vampire is one moment of weakness away from being responsible for the town's next disappearance, and it threatens to tear him away from all the bonds he depends on.Still, the killer needs to be brought to justice, and Souji and his friends will find a way.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 20





	Crimson & Silver

In the cool night air, the heavy, oppressive fog that blanketed the town became a refreshing mist. Souji drew in a deep breath, held it for a moment, and let it out with a relaxed, contented smile. It was nice to be able to enjoy nights like this, secure in the knowledge that the fog had no victim to claim. 

Souji walked leisurely along the path by the floodplain, listening to the quiet murmuring of the river and letting his mind wander. Yukiko had come back to school today, and was getting back into her routine like she’d never left it. Where there should’ve been another corpse for the media to gawk at, there was Yukiko, alive and well, wearing a smile more genuine and whole than he’d ever seen from her. Where there should’ve been another victim of the killer’s twisted rampage, there was another hero awakened to her Persona, determined to protect the town. 

The three of them had really done it. They’d used the gifts they’d been given, and they’d saved someone. They’d changed the course of this tragedy, and they had the power to do it again - the four of them, now. 

Maybe it was a bit of a selfish thing to think, especially after what Yosuke’s Shadow had said, but for a moment Souji allowed himself to enjoy the idea that he really was a hero, that they really were heroes. He had never felt more satisfied and fulfilled in his life than he did right now, enjoying this foggy night, and knowing it was thanks to him and his friends that Yukiko’s corpse wouldn’t be strung up on a power line this morning. 

The sun would return to the sky over Inaba soon, and Yukiko would be there to see it.

Souji stepped off the path and sat down on the grass, laying back, folding his arms behind his head and closing his eyes. He took another deep breath, and smiled. Dojima would probably be home in time for dinner tomorrow, with no new murder case to keep him busy through the evening. Souji couldn’t wait to see the smile on Nanako’s face.

With all the weight on his shoulders lifted, Souji couldn’t help but get a little too comfortable and relaxed, laying down on the grass. It didn’t help that soccer practice had tired him out quite a bit. Before he knew it, he found himself drifting off to sleep, without a whisper of stress or fear in his mind.

* * *

Blue.

The quiet hum of a car’s engine, and the sound of a piano playing softly.

Souji’s blurred vision came into focus, and he saw the familiar sight of the Velvet Room before him. Margaret and Marie were seated where they always were.

In the middle seat behind the table, though, a figure other than Igor sat. A woman, with that same silver hair and those same golden eyes as Margaret, wearing a deep blue uniform dress not too dissimilar from Margaret’s own, but without sleeves. Her hair was cut in a bob that reached down to her ears, and she was wearing a narrow blue cap.

There was terror in her eyes, and Souji thought he saw a tear running down her cheek, although she seemed to be trying to keep her composure. Margaret, as well, looked tense and nervous, her lips pursed in a tight line, and her eyes not meeting her guest’s. Marie was hiding her face from him entirely. 

Why were they all so uncomfortable? So scared? Did something happen?

The unfamiliar attendant in the middle began to speak.

In an instant, everything went black.

* * *

Pain. Searing, blinding, agonizing pain. Something tore into Souji’s neck, and he was ripped violently from his dream back into the land of the living. Something cold was holding him, pinning him down and restraining him. An icy hand was over his mouth, silencing his screaming and holding his head in place. Another hand held one of his arms down, and a much heavier weight kept his other shoulder pinned. He tried to struggle, but he couldn’t move anything but his legs, and none of his flailing or kicking found purchase on anything but the ground. 

He could feel a dull pressure on his throat, alongside the burning agony. Something had stabbed him, something had tore the artery in his neck, but his blood wasn’t just spilling out, it was being drained, it was being pulled from him. 

Suddenly, the pressure stopped, and whatever was stabbing him had been pulled away. The pain didn’t let up for a moment. It only seemed to build. He was burning. There was a fire pumping through his veins, spreading from the stab wound out to his shoulders, out to his head. The hand was still pressed against his mouth, and he still couldn’t get one of his screams out into the open air no matter how hard he struggled, no matter how hard he tried. 

He heard a whisper in his ear, a male voice, as icy as the hands that kept him restrained.

“A gift for the Wild Card. For the battles that lie ahead.”

With an audible smirk, the voice continued. “You’ll thank me later.”

Souji found that statement almost surreal, amidst all the pain. He almost wanted to laugh at how ridiculously  _ wrong _ it was, because why would anyone ever be  _ grateful  _ for torture like this, his whole  _ body _ felt like it was on  _ fire _ and he was pretty sure he was bleeding out and it hurt and his heart felt like it was going to beat out of his chest and it was pounding in his ears and he couldn’t  _ move _ and his screams were still being muffled by that  _ damn hand _ and he was scared and Margaret was scared and he had no idea what was happening to him and it  _ hurt  _ and it felt like his heart was  _ slowing down now _ -

Whoever the hell it was that was pinning him down and killing him finally let go and stood up.

Souji screamed, a shaking, guttural, choking scream that filled the night air, and he kept screaming until his lungs were about ready to give up, then he gasped for air and kept screaming. He tossed and turned and flailed, not even trying to hit his assailant but just trying to vent all the pain and trying to escape his own body because he was  _ trapped in all this burning _ and he couldn’t get out and it wouldn’t stop and it was too much and he couldn’t even think.

He was blind and deaf to the world, swallowed entirely by the burning and the suffering until it was his whole existence. The assailant might have left, and he wouldn’t know. Someone else could’ve come to help, and he wouldn’t know. He could’ve been kidnapped, taken somewhere, and he wouldn’t know. 

He didn’t know how much time passed, but the pain started to fade. It started to fade enough for him to form thoughts again, for him to grit his teeth and hold back his own screams. It faded enough for him to notice in the back of his mind that his teeth felt weird. It faded enough for him to notice his heart was beating slower and slower, weaker and weaker, less than once a second. He was lucid enough now to realize he was probably dying. His screams finally ceased, replaced with panicked hyperventilating.

But he wasn’t weak. He could still flail, he could still move. As the pain faded further, he found he still had total control over his body. He lost all that blood, his heart wasn’t  _ working _ , but he still had all of his strength and it wasn’t fading. He held onto that fact like it was the only thing keeping him alive. His body still worked, his strength wasn’t gone yet. He repeated it again and again. He rolled over and started trying to push himself up and get back on his feet.  _ I can still move, I’m still alive. _ It wasn’t difficult to get up because he was weak, it was difficult because he was so unsteady he kept falling over. 

The pain was fading still, and where he wasn’t burning he felt cold, cold as a corpse.

_ I can still move, I’m still alive. _ He finally managed to stand on his own two feet, shaky and unsteady. He started to run. He didn’t know where to.  _ I can still move, I’m still alive. _

He was still in a panic, but the pain was gone. His heart had stopped. His body was as cold as the misty night air around him. He kept running, but it wasn’t exhausting him at all. He felt no pain in his muscles, in his lungs. There was nothing. Nothing but cold. He was dead. But he could still move, and he was clinging to that as the only thing keeping him from fading, he was running like he’d fall unconscious and never wake up if he stopped for even a moment. 

There was a smell in the air. Something he’d never smelled before. Sweet, rich and heady. He could feel it on the cold wind. It was subtle in the sense that there wasn’t much of it, but it was at the same time loud, demanding his full attention. It smelled amazing. It smelled delicious. Delicious and tempting like he’d wandered into a world-class restaurant. Another surreal little bit of positivity that felt so completely insanely ridiculous against the undercurrent of being in the process of probably actually dying.

When he finally became aware of his surroundings, he found himself in front of the Dojima house, like his body had taken him there on his own. Of course it did. This was home. It was safe.

Souji hurried through the front door and into the living room, still gasping for the air despite his body not seeming to need it anymore.

The smell was stronger here. Way stronger. If the scent outside was like being in a restaurant, this was the kitchen. He suddenly felt like he was starving. He looked around, confused.

He saw Nanako, sitting there, looking up at him, just as confused as he was. “Um… Are you okay…?”

Souji froze. 

For the first time since he woke up, he went still.

In the stillness and silence, he started to notice things he’d been too worked up to pay attention to before. 

He licked at his teeth. There were fangs, there. Two fangs, an inch long each at least, protruding from his upper jaw where his normal canines used to be. 

He took a sniff of the air. The smell was making him drool. It was almost unbearably good. And he could tell it was coming from the living room, not the kitchen. What in the living room, though? Nanako had no food. They’d had dinner before he left, that night.

His heart was still stopped. He was cold and dead. He had fangs.

“...You can’t be serious.” Souji said to nobody.

That smell was Nanako.

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,  _ no, no, no… _ ” Souji turned around and ran as far away from the house as he could before he had so much as another moment to think about that. The smell was blood, wasn’t it? He’d been bitten on the neck by a goddamn  _ actual vampire _ and he  _ was one now.  _ How much of this supernatural stuff was even real, all of it? First a parallel dimension born of human thought, now this?

The smell wasn’t just Nanako. It was everywhere. Never before had Inaba felt so  _ crowded _ . That tempting scent was carried on the breeze wherever he went, calling to him. His throat was starting to ache. A dull burn, nothing compared to what he’d just suffered, but enough to demand his attention just like the scent did. 

He needed to escape the scent. He needed to get away from it. He was running now not because he thought he’d die if he stopped, but because he thought he might get distracted if he stopped. If he let himself think about anything for even a moment, he’d be thinking about this craving that was suddenly filling his mind. He kept his body moving, almost automatically, and he kept it moving away, not towards. But there was no away. The scent was everywhere. 

There was only one place he could go that was really safe, that was really empty.

He crashed through the locked glass door of the Junes, ripping up his clothes and his skin, and leaving a mess of bloodsoaked shards behind him. His own blood. It hadn’t been completely drained by the one who’d bitten him, some of it was still in his body. And now it was all just… Spilled there, on the floor of the department store behind him, it was all going to waste now. He wanted to turn around and drop onto his hands and knees and lick it up, because  _ that _ wouldn’t be hurting anybody, and-

A siren went off. There were lights on. There was night stocking staff in the building.

He kept running. He kept running until he reached the Electronics department, and then he dove into the TV without even stopping to line himself up properly. His leg hit the edge and knocked it over as he went in, and it fell to the ground and smashed behind him.

* * *

He landed face-first on the floor of the strange ‘set’ that served as their entrance point to the parallel world.

He took a deep breath.

The scent was here.

Souji was terrified for a moment, before he realized it was just because he himself was bleeding.

All this stress and panic was too much to bear, and here, safe and alone, he couldn’t bring himself to care anymore. He started to lick the bloody wounds covering his arms, and then started to suckle on them.

God, that  _ taste _ . It was sweet and rich and savoury and intoxicating and heavenly and it felt like it was numbing his mind, it felt like it was numbing his whole body and he was floating on a cloud, he felt refreshed and soothed like he never had before, and… and there was so  _ little _ of it, there was barely any left, he’d already bled most of it out, that greedy  _ bastard _ had taken most of it for himself and he was  _ empty _ and it was  _ all gone _ and he wanted to scream.

Souji was desperately licking a bloodstain off the floor when he heard squeaky footsteps behind him. Startled, he jumped to his feet, and tried to dust himself off and look decent and play it off like he hadn’t just been doing that.

“Sensei…? Is that you? You don’t smell quite right…” Teddie wandered up to Souji with an inquisitive look on his face, standing right up next to him and leaning in real close to give him a sniff.

Souji rubbed the back of his neck and grimaced awkwardly. “Yeah, it’s me. I’m, uh…”

While he was debating with himself how much he should say, Teddie saved him the effort and interrupted. “And why’d you come here alone? I don’t think anyone else has been sent in here, either, this place is pretty  _ bear _ en right now… Which must mean…”

Teddie gave Souji the most inquisitive, analytical stare he could muster, with his hand pressed against his chin. “Hmmmm…”

Souji couldn’t imagine he actually knew anything, but he couldn’t help but feel a little nervous.

Suddenly, Teddie jumped a good 8 feet in the air. “Sensei came to visit me! You’re here just to spend time with me, aren’t you?”

A bead of sweat ran down Souji’s face, and despite everything, he found himself chuckling slightly. “...Yeah. I don’t really have anyone else I can turn to, right now.”

Teddie’s eyes lit up. “You need something, Something only I can do? Well, Sensei, you came to the right place! Teddie is at your service!” He gave an energetic salute.

Souji couldn’t help but smile.

Why is it that talking to a mysterious animate bear costume in a hidden TV dimension felt like the first bit of normalcy he’d felt since he woke up? It was surprising just how calming and grounding he found Teddie’s presence and optimism right now. It was really comforting just to be thinking coherent human thoughts again, and not trying to lick blood off the floor.

It hadn’t really been his plan, but hanging out with Teddie sounded pretty nice right about now.

“Actually…” He trailed off and thought for a moment.

“I might need a place to stay, for a while. Somewhere that isn’t the human world. You wouldn’t mind hosting a roommate for a little while, would you, Ted?”

Teddie’s big round eyes went wide with excitement. “You want to stay here? With Teddie? For a while?” 

Souji was hoping he’d just take that at face value and be happy, but he knew Teddie wasn’t that air-headed (in the figurative sense, at least). So, of course, the bear costume’s excited look deflated into a suspicious one. “But… Why? What are you avoiding the human world for? It’s your home, isn’t it? And it’s dangerous here…”

Souji sighed, rubbing his forehead. 

There was really no point in lying to Teddie. Or to any of his friends, really, whenever it came to it. The whole point was that they could trust eachother with anything, wasn’t it? And none of them could exactly be skeptics anymore, after all they’ve already seen.

With a sad, weak grimace on his face, Souji forced out a matter-of-fact explanation. “Teddie, I think I might’ve been turned into a human-eating monster.”

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my first long-form story, hope it's okay so far! i'm trash for vampires don't mind me
> 
> also a weird thing i noticed is, i started writing this story using Yu and realized it kinda felt wrong
> 
> reading a bunch of p4 fics, i've started to associate Yu with the character as written in the anime/spinoffs, and Souji with the blank-slate silent protag
> 
> so writing a protag-centered AU story feels like it works better for the blank slate, in a sense? whereas for the post-ultimax story i have planned, i'm probably going to use Yu


End file.
